My name is Patrick Gundelfinger and I am a sophomore here at the University of Cincinnati. I am currently working on my degree in middle childhood education with a focus on Math and Science. I enjoy all sports and used to be extremely involved with them in high school. I am currently in the Army National Guard. On my down time I am either training for the military or for a marathon I plan on running in October.
1) Does technology make a difference in the learning process or could you teach just as well without it?
I feel that technology does have a major effect on the way we learn today and if we use it well it can be extremly benificial. It jas made information easier to get a hold of as well as helped us communicate better.
2) Are students today fundamentally different than students in the past?
I feel as though students are different now compared to the past due in part to the advancement in technology.
Reflection: From the Clark article I agree with my answer about technology and how it does make a difference. Students were tested and those of which used computers to learn scored higher then the other students who learned the traditional way. I feel that education through good teaching methods and technology can lead to more intelligence in students.My thoughts about students being different today from the past still hasn't hanged. One things that caught my eye and continues to makes me feel this way is the extreme difference in the amount of reading that goes on now compared to then. This is because we don't nearly have to research as hard or read as much material because we have technology that summarizes it for us so we just have the facts. The advancement in technology will not only make more advances in teaching but when paired with effective teaching skills it will bring more advancements to education
Objectivist
based on memorization
when answered correctly a reward is given
students work by themselves
when teacher gives assignment students are expected to understand
Constructivist
students are more involved
teachers will help students come to a conclusion by working together
there are more group activities instead of individual learning
students are expected to interact with others which helps develop skills
Training strategies that involve technology in the classroom
Training that offers a variety of approaches
Games
Spend 30 minutes playing two different games (15 minutes each). When finished, visit your ePortfolio page and add a section dedicated to each game. Include the following:
1) A link to the game (see below)
2) Label the game as one of the four types of game tools and explain why this game falls into that category.
3) Visit ODE's website and decide which of Ohio's Academic Content Standards could be taught using this game, if any (select at least two specific indicators).
4) Describe your experience using the game.
SMARTBoard Games on PBS or search Smart Exchange for games.
We jumped around a lot on this site and were able to play a lot of different games which was cool. I feel that younger students would like this because the games all related to cartoons that they watch which are educational with in themselves. One of the games we played on it involved catching fish and measuring there length after doing so you had to categorize them by there length and if they should go into the big fish pile or the little fish pile. I felt that is was a Drill Type Game because you would continue to catch and measure the fish and categorize them. This fallows Ohio's Academic Content Standards specifically the Mathematics Standards of measurement for grades K-2 MD.K2.1a Measure an object with a given tool such as a ruler, yardstick, meter stick or measuring tape.
Spore Creature Creator (Tutorial)
I would consider this game as a creation software game- where students use logic to design video games. In this game you make an organism and try to advance it so that it will survive and continue to reproduce. This game is definitely a more advance game which could be used for a higher age group. It can be used to show evolution and how advancements in certain areas allow species to survive. I feel that this would meet with the Ohio Science Standards for life science from grades 6-8. With having to do with "the characteristics of an organism are a result of inherited traits received from parents." This fits perfectly because in the game you can reproduce and have little babies fallow you around that look like the parents.
ISTE
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity Teaching isn’t as easy as students think it maybe, as a teacher you have to take what you know in a certain subject and teach is to the students while making sure you teach everything that is required by the state. Being able to incorporate technology in to this only enhances the learning environment for the students making it more interesting for them to learn. Technology can also lead for the student to become more creative with how they themselves go about doing projects later on, so it’s important for teachers to teach with these tools and show the students how to do these things as well.
promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify student's conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.
Starting off in these class we didn’t understand how much we could actually use technology to help us to teach and how many different tools that were available to us as teachers. I would know find it hard to not incorporate some type of technology into my teaching process. Just by seeing what other students posted onto the Diigo siteI realized how many different lesson plans are already out there that as a teacher you could modify and or use your classroom. Each posting of a lesson plan or game was typically different to which was awesome to see because that means there are a wide verity of things out there for us to learn from and incorporate into our own lesson plans. A fellow student posted a pretty cool lesson plan on there about fairy tales that I like and that would be good for a younger classroom setting which would get the students involved with talking to each other which I think they would enjoy a lot at a lower level of learning. Things like these can really help teachers out when they want to mix it up a little bit in the class room to help the students stay interested in school and learning.
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
Teachers design, develop, and re develop assessments to better the learning content for students all the time. Being up to date with the different computer tools today can really help a teacher develop the best learning experience possible for their students.
provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching.
In our very first class meeting our professor showed us different ways to have your students take tests with immediate feedback. I never knew that you could use your cell phones and text your answers in having a live feed showing the results as they happened. Something like this would be extremely helpful if you are doing a review session for your students and they can get results to how they are doing right away. Another tool that we learned about was Google and how to make a test through it. I made a test over geology on it. I have professors here at UC that will have you read a chapter or two and then take a test over it on something similar to this. We would go over the answers the next day and they would base their lesson and how well the students did focusing their lesson more so on the stuff we struggled on. I feel like this would be a great way to incorporate this into a science like my professors have.
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
I feel that as a teacher you need to try to teach to the students interest making it as enjoyable for them to learn as it is for you to teach and today’s society is a digital one so being knowledgeable in this is very important.
model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning. The only time I got to incorporate a model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning would have been in my group presentation. We had to make a lesson plan for a classroom that only had one computer and a projector for a sixth grade science class. We looked up online what state requirements were for sixth grade science and we decided to do the rock cycle. We got an interactive lesson plan online that the students could go through together with the teacher. This site would teach the kids a lot about what they needed to know about the rock cycle and would ask them questions throughout which we let them answer as a class. This interactive was really great because it even at the end after teaching them and testing them allowed the students to find rocks with a magnifying glass and using what they learned classify them. After this we handed out rocks for the students to look at and let them use the skills they just learned to classify these rocks hands on. We got this rock kit from the library at UC and the students seemed to like that they were able to have a hands on experience with the rocks and classifying them. By using our resources as a group we were able to put together in my opinion a very informative and hands on lesson. There wasn’t much down time for the students and they were always kept involved with what was going on.
4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility
Teachers know that they ways of teaching are changing with all the different types of technology that is coming out, and as a teacher you have to adapt and overcome to these changes and incorporate them into your lesson plan to keep the students involved.
Advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources. As a teacher not only do you have to be able to use technology to your own benefit but you need to be able to teach it to your students as well so they can use it to enhance their learning environment. What a lot of individuals don’t realize while using technology is that they are risking copy right problems each time they log on and try to use that information. One thing I was always taught throughout school was the different ways to cite work that you used so that you don’t get in trouble this is huge because as a teacher if you don’t demonstrate why it’s wrong the students won’t understand why it is and will do it. This is something huge for a teacher in the age group that I’m in because the students won’t necessarily understand why it’s so wrong and as a teacher it’s your job to not only introduce them to the benefits of technology but to make sure they understand fully what they can and can’t do with it. As a teacher I know that everything I pull off the internet be a video or information I need to make sure that I cite that information and give credit to the people who actually found that information or made that video. If I assign a research project I need to make sure that my students cite the information that they got and make sure that they know how to do it properly. Being able to pull lesson plans and information off the internet is a privilege that we have now that they didn’t have a long time ago which means that we have to be able to monitor students and make sure they use it that right way to avoid future problems with copyright issues and stuff like that.
5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership
As a teacher you need to continuously improve your own personal knowledge about your subjects that you are teaching. This is important because things are always changing and you can’t teach things that are out of date to students. Also there have been studies that show that there are certain teaching methods that are better than others which you should familiarize yourself with so your students get the best learning experience possible.
Participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning.
This class is based on finding creative applications of technology to improve student learning. Our professor had two web sites that we would post to. One of which students would post lesson plans, games, and other type of educational devices for other students to look at and comment on. This expands our knowledge on the different things that are out there for us to learn off of. This expanded out learning community from a local one to a global one. We were able to find lessons and everything from global stand point and share it locally with fellow classmates. We also had a local website that we used that we took what we learned in class and posted reflections of the different tools that we learned out or lesson plans we learned about. By participating in these local and global learning communities it helped us students learn about a lot of creative applications and improve our learning and hopefully that of our students in the future. I know I was able to learn about a lot of different educational games and lesson plans that can only help me later on in my career.
Final Reflection:
After taking this class I have been exposed to so many different ways of teaching a simple topic without technology into a fun and exciting one with technology. My teachers in the past have never used technology to educate other than power points. I have learned how to use a SMARTboard, cell phones, computers, and Ipads for lessons along with using educational games to make learning fun for students. This class has shown me that there are many different ways to teach the same subject and that it doesn’t have to be boring for you and the students. I have always been pretty good with technology and know that I can incorporate it into my future students learning I look forward to coming up with some fun activities and continuing to learn new things to help them learn better. This class for me was something that taught me that class doesn’t just have to be just taking notes and giving lectures. I felt that my group did an excellent job of making the rock cycle as fun as possible and we only had one computer to work with. With my focus subjects being math and science I feel that it’s going to be a challenge and important for me to be able to use technology to make this class a little bit more exciting. Through this class I was able to learn how to be able to incorporate many different things into a lesson plan and by having diigo I have seen a lot of different things from other teachers that students have posted which has made me excited to make up my own type of interactive that other people could maybe use someday.
1) Does technology make a difference in the learning process or could you teach just as well without it?
I feel that technology does have a major effect on the way we learn today and if we use it well it can be extremly benificial. It jas made information easier to get a hold of as well as helped us communicate better.
http://techtodayradio.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/so-is-technology-helping-or-hurting-education/
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/communities/northfield_linwood_somers-point/education-forum-at-mainland-shows-technology-hurts-education-as-much/article_88d8aff8-6ef9-11e1-b0ac-0019bb2963f4.html
2) Are students today fundamentally different than students in the past?
I feel as though students are different now compared to the past due in part to the advancement in technology.
http://www.education.com/magazine/article/preschoolers-computers-bottom-line/
Reflection:
From the Clark article I agree with my answer about technology and how it does make a difference. Students were tested and those of which used computers to learn scored higher then the other students who learned the traditional way. I feel that education through good teaching methods and technology can lead to more intelligence in students.My thoughts about students being different today from the past still hasn't hanged. One things that caught my eye and continues to makes me feel this way is the extreme difference in the amount of reading that goes on now compared to then. This is because we don't nearly have to research as hard or read as much material because we have technology that summarizes it for us so we just have the facts. The advancement in technology will not only make more advances in teaching but when paired with effective teaching skills it will bring more advancements to education
Objectivist
Constructivist
Click here for larger version
Solutions:
Games
Spend 30 minutes playing two different games (15 minutes each). When finished, visit your ePortfolio page and add a section dedicated to each game. Include the following:
1) A link to the game (see below)
2) Label the game as one of the four types of game tools and explain why this game falls into that category.
3) Visit ODE's website and decide which of Ohio's Academic Content Standards could be taught using this game, if any (select at least two specific indicators).
4) Describe your experience using the game.
SMARTBoard Games on PBS or search Smart Exchange for games.
We jumped around a lot on this site and were able to play a lot of different games which was cool. I feel that younger students would like this because the games all related to cartoons that they watch which are educational with in themselves. One of the games we played on it involved catching fish and measuring there length after doing so you had to categorize them by there length and if they should go into the big fish pile or the little fish pile. I felt that is was a Drill Type Game because you would continue to catch and measure the fish and categorize them. This fallows Ohio's Academic Content Standards specifically the Mathematics Standards of measurement for grades K-2 MD.K2.1a Measure an object with a given tool such as a ruler, yardstick, meter stick or measuring tape.
Spore Creature Creator (Tutorial)
I would consider this game as a creation software game- where students use logic to design video games. In this game you make an organism and try to advance it so that it will survive and continue to reproduce. This game is definitely a more advance game which could be used for a higher age group. It can be used to show evolution and how advancements in certain areas allow species to survive. I feel that this would meet with the Ohio Science Standards for life science from grades 6-8. With having to do with "the characteristics of an organism are a result of inherited traits received from parents." This fits perfectly because in the game you can reproduce and have little babies fallow you around that look like the parents.
ISTE
1. Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
Teaching isn’t as easy as students think it maybe, as a teacher you have to take what you know in a certain subject and teach is to the students while making sure you teach everything that is required by the state. Being able to incorporate technology in to this only enhances the learning environment for the students making it more interesting for them to learn. Technology can also lead for the student to become more creative with how they themselves go about doing projects later on, so it’s important for teachers to teach with these tools and show the students how to do these things as well.
promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify student's conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes.
Starting off in these class we didn’t understand how much we could actually use technology to help us to teach and how many different tools that were available to us as teachers. I would know find it hard to not incorporate some type of technology into my teaching process. Just by seeing what other students posted onto the Diigo site I realized how many different lesson plans are already out there that as a teacher you could modify and or use your classroom. Each posting of a lesson plan or game was typically different to which was awesome to see because that means there are a wide verity of things out there for us to learn from and incorporate into our own lesson plans. A fellow student posted a pretty cool lesson plan on there about fairy tales that I like and that would be good for a younger classroom setting which would get the students involved with talking to each other which I think they would enjoy a lot at a lower level of learning. Things like these can really help teachers out when they want to mix it up a little bit in the class room to help the students stay interested in school and learning.
2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
Teachers design, develop, and re develop assessments to better the learning content for students all the time. Being up to date with the different computer tools today can really help a teacher develop the best learning experience possible for their students.
provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching.
In our very first class meeting our professor showed us different ways to have your students take tests with immediate feedback. I never knew that you could use your cell phones and text your answers in having a live feed showing the results as they happened. Something like this would be extremely helpful if you are doing a review session for your students and they can get results to how they are doing right away. Another tool that we learned about was Google and how to make a test through it. I made a test over geology on it. I have professors here at UC that will have you read a chapter or two and then take a test over it on something similar to this. We would go over the answers the next day and they would base their lesson and how well the students did focusing their lesson more so on the stuff we struggled on. I feel like this would be a great way to incorporate this into a science like my professors have.
3. Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
I feel that as a teacher you need to try to teach to the students interest making it as enjoyable for them to learn as it is for you to teach and today’s society is a digital one so being knowledgeable in this is very important.
model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning.
The only time I got to incorporate a model and facilitate effective use of current and emerging digital tools to locate, analyze, evaluate, and use information resources to support research and learning would have been in my group presentation. We had to make a lesson plan for a classroom that only had one computer and a projector for a sixth grade science class. We looked up online what state requirements were for sixth grade science and we decided to do the rock cycle. We got an interactive lesson plan online that the students could go through together with the teacher. This site would teach the kids a lot about what they needed to know about the rock cycle and would ask them questions throughout which we let them answer as a class. This interactive was really great because it even at the end after teaching them and testing them allowed the students to find rocks with a magnifying glass and using what they learned classify them. After this we handed out rocks for the students to look at and let them use the skills they just learned to classify these rocks hands on. We got this rock kit from the library at UC and the students seemed to like that they were able to have a hands on experience with the rocks and classifying them. By using our resources as a group we were able to put together in my opinion a very informative and hands on lesson. There wasn’t much down time for the students and they were always kept involved with what was going on.
4. Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility
Teachers know that they ways of teaching are changing with all the different types of technology that is coming out, and as a teacher you have to adapt and overcome to these changes and incorporate them into your lesson plan to keep the students involved.
Advocate, model, and teach safe, legal, and ethical use of digital information and technology, including respect for copyright, intellectual property, and the appropriate documentation of sources.
As a teacher not only do you have to be able to use technology to your own benefit but you need to be able to teach it to your students as well so they can use it to enhance their learning environment. What a lot of individuals don’t realize while using technology is that they are risking copy right problems each time they log on and try to use that information. One thing I was always taught throughout school was the different ways to cite work that you used so that you don’t get in trouble this is huge because as a teacher if you don’t demonstrate why it’s wrong the students won’t understand why it is and will do it. This is something huge for a teacher in the age group that I’m in because the students won’t necessarily understand why it’s so wrong and as a teacher it’s your job to not only introduce them to the benefits of technology but to make sure they understand fully what they can and can’t do with it. As a teacher I know that everything I pull off the internet be a video or information I need to make sure that I cite that information and give credit to the people who actually found that information or made that video. If I assign a research project I need to make sure that my students cite the information that they got and make sure that they know how to do it properly. Being able to pull lesson plans and information off the internet is a privilege that we have now that they didn’t have a long time ago which means that we have to be able to monitor students and make sure they use it that right way to avoid future problems with copyright issues and stuff like that.
5. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership
As a teacher you need to continuously improve your own personal knowledge about your subjects that you are teaching. This is important because things are always changing and you can’t teach things that are out of date to students. Also there have been studies that show that there are certain teaching methods that are better than others which you should familiarize yourself with so your students get the best learning experience possible.
Participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning.
This class is based on finding creative applications of technology to improve student learning. Our professor had two web sites that we would post to. One of which students would post lesson plans, games, and other type of educational devices for other students to look at and comment on. This expands our knowledge on the different things that are out there for us to learn off of. This expanded out learning community from a local one to a global one. We were able to find lessons and everything from global stand point and share it locally with fellow classmates. We also had a local website that we used that we took what we learned in class and posted reflections of the different tools that we learned out or lesson plans we learned about. By participating in these local and global learning communities it helped us students learn about a lot of creative applications and improve our learning and hopefully that of our students in the future. I know I was able to learn about a lot of different educational games and lesson plans that can only help me later on in my career.
Final Reflection:
After taking this class I have been exposed to so many different ways of teaching a simple topic without technology into a fun and exciting one with technology. My teachers in the past have never used technology to educate other than power points. I have learned how to use a SMARTboard, cell phones, computers, and Ipads for lessons along with using educational games to make learning fun for students. This class has shown me that there are many different ways to teach the same subject and that it doesn’t have to be boring for you and the students. I have always been pretty good with technology and know that I can incorporate it into my future students learning I look forward to coming up with some fun activities and continuing to learn new things to help them learn better. This class for me was something that taught me that class doesn’t just have to be just taking notes and giving lectures. I felt that my group did an excellent job of making the rock cycle as fun as possible and we only had one computer to work with. With my focus subjects being math and science I feel that it’s going to be a challenge and important for me to be able to use technology to make this class a little bit more exciting. Through this class I was able to learn how to be able to incorporate many different things into a lesson plan and by having diigo I have seen a lot of different things from other teachers that students have posted which has made me excited to make up my own type of interactive that other people could maybe use someday.